Saturday, 14 January 2012

On Friday the 13th, we went to the court case of JB, a housing activist who the infamous slumlord Marek Mossakowski and his little helper, Hubert "Prince" Massalski, are trying to evict.

It is this infamous pair who were the landlords of the murdered activist, Jolanta Brzeska and who are responsible for harrassing and evicting tenants in various buildings they have "acquired".

Part of the problem is the mafia-like behaviour of the authorities, who do everything to privatize buildings. In the case of this building, only part of it was acquired and is administered by the dastardly duo - the rest in still owned by the city. In cases like this, the city usually does not say that the tenants who live in the property that was reprivatized (usually specific flats in the building) are the tenants of the new owners, but they usually let those people administer the whole building and collect any rents they want! JB is arguing that since his flat is owned by the city, M&M are not his landlords.

Would seem logical, no? Well, not in Poland. Because the system is rigged from beginning to end. It is shocking that, while Mossakowski has many properties throughout Warsaw, the city lets him live in municipal housing - while evicting hundreds or poor families every year! And recently, when tenants in one house were taken to court by Mossakowski, the court decided that he was "too poor" to afford the court fees, and waived them for the slumlord. (By contrast, our comrade fired from multinational Roche found that his court fees as an unemployed person still totalled 1500 euros, just to file the case.) Something stinks and it stinks of corruption and social injustice.

During the court case, the Little Prince cried about the fact that somebody tried to take his photo outside the court and falsely claimed that he was "attacked" by JB during the last trial. Afterwards. he called the security and court police on our comrade for allegedly trying to take his picture. And he claimed to the comrade that he knows who he is and where he lives.

As we told him, there is no need to have his photo since he has already been on TV and has his photo on the internet, most famously on the page of the ZSzP. Not to be confused with our organization, the ZSzP is a band of people with illusions of grandeur - the Union of the Polish Nobility. It is there where people still claim to be gentry and Massalski calls himself a prince, apparently oblivious to the fact there is no monarchy in Poland. But that doesn't stop those people from trying to act that way.

After being detained for the security for a little while, the comrade was able to leave.